Monday, February 9, 2015

A Photo Here, A Photo There...

We've had a couple of days of perfect weather. Dry (i.e. not humid) with highs in the 70s weather. Open the windows and air out the house weather. Sit back and watch the white, puffy clouds drift gently across that bluebird sky weather. It's felt like spring. Winter is returning tonight, but that taste of spring was refreshing-- and a reminder that there's no time like the present to get some things done, outside. It won't be long before spring is here for more than a day at a time, and our spring gives way to summer with alarming rapidity. (And I'd rather finish the heavy lifting before summer, because our summer weather makes me miserable.)

...Spring isn't exactly prime blanket-making season, but when you love making blankets, there really isn't any wrong time to do so.

A long while back, I crocheted blocks for a sampler afghan, using those bright, happy "Cath Kidston" colors. My "Be of Good Cheer" afghan, I called it. I had fun making all those blocks, but then I got to the not-such-fun part of the process-- joining them-- and said, "You know what? No." Out of sight, out of mind. Sort of. I still thought about them every so often, but the "not right now" is strong with this one.

Maybe this is the time to take the plunge.

I went so far as to look at joining technique tutorials and lay the blocks out on the floor.
Trixie gave her expert opinion ("Needs more dog hair. Here, let me help you with that."):

I'm lacking confidence, but it would be nice to have it done...

In the end, I set them aside again. BUT they are still in plain sight, so there's hope that they won't go back into hibernation.

I needed something to crochet (withdrawal pangs from not having a hook in my hand for so long), so I pulled out the hexagon afghan. A little at a time... I'm still not crazy-excited about this project, but it's ok. Crocheting the hexagons is pleasant, at least. I think this may be a "guy afghan". It's so simple/unembellished, and those colors wouldn't have been my first choice, if I weren't trying to eat away at a limited stash of Simply Soft...

Meanwhile, on the non-crochet blanket front, I'm slowly making progress on the quilt. It takes me a while to get anything done on it, but there's no need to rush.

I have quite a stack of the half-square triangles trimmed and pressed and ready to go. As you can see in the background of this photo, however, there are still many more to make.

One evening, I took a piece of graph paper and started sketching out a rough idea of the quilt. (The colors are just random placeholders. They don't correspond directly to the fabrics I'm using or the final arrangement of colors.)

The quilt (as of current plans) will be nineteen HSTs long and fourteen wide. I'm not sure, yet, whether there will be a border/frame.

I'm new to quilting, but I do know that they often are assembled in blocks. To make this quilt more manageable, I thought I might break it down into kinda-sorta blocks first. Make those, then join them into strips. The alternative would be to join loooong strips of the HSTs, and I think that seems messier... More likely to result in the strips not wanting to line up properly.

Possibly this is exactly the wrong way to do things, according to the Quilt Masters. As a newbie, I get to do what I want and not care what anyone else thinks. ;o) (Well, it's a quilt for my own home, so if I'm happy, that's good enough.) ...But if I remember, maybe I'll try to research this issue before I do too much more sewing...

Here's my first (um, only) completed "block":

Is pretty, yes? ;o) (Little white lies are encouraged, if you find them necessary.)

Will all my "points" line up perfectly in this quilt? ...Probably not.
Will I ever sew a perfect quilt, no matter how many I might sew? ...Unlikely.

Welcome!

I'm Michael (frequently found online as "MossyOwls"), and this is where I keep track of my crafty interests. I love to crochet, enjoy the occasional small knitting project, and am beginning to play around with (simple) machine quilting and watercolor painting. (No telling what could come next!)

Before I became obsessed with crocheting, I used to blog about another crafting passion-- polymer clay. (Might pick it up again, one of these days...)